I think if the alternative to PKM is “locking knowledge up in some company specific silo” – then this is also a failure of corporate KM. Locking anything up is silos is “failed KM”. Anthing that only keeps knowledge explicit, in systems and infrastructures, is failed.

Here’s an alternative way to look at it. Think of corporate KM that is not failed, and that priovides a rich set of networks, tools and of conversations, where your peers round the world can bounce knowledge off each other to build a shared understanding that is far in excess of what you personally could achieve.

Would you not join in, and freely add your knowledge to the mix?

Techniques for achieving this might be to use blogs as a PKM tool, but aggregate, comment, tag, search etc multiple blogs to create enterprise KM assets, in pretty much the way the internet works. Another example might be to automatically flow files into enterprise repositories associated with their tags, when they get a status of issued etc. A final example might be to allow the enterprise KM system to be cc’d on emails.

I like your 3 types of knowledge structure, but common, learning and work seem to be missing at least one area, investment. I invest time and effort in my PKM because it’s an investment for the future, not simply to capture what I am working on or learning now. Investment in this sense is not learning, however it might be used for learning in the future.

Steve

Broadly speaking, in enterprise context, the “knowledge” we all deal come in 3 areas, i.e. communal (or common org knowledge for all staff), learning and the specific work. There will be great overlap between enterprise and individual, especially for the latter two areas.

In my opinion, for category #1 common org knowledge, if corp KM is well done, there should be minimal effort needed by the individual. This can be the acid test for the effectiveness of corp KM.

For category #2, the KM solutions should be designed to support group-based learning and sharing (like community blog), and yet it is able to recognise the individiual who contributes, and to allow individual to further organise and use as though it is integral part of one’s PKM. Then, we are close to integrating the two.

For category #3, it is a toughest area of the three. The KM solution should allow work information to be systematically captured by all involved to provide a shared situation picture for effective collaboration, and yet allow inidividual to manage and view information in personalised manner, e.g. to-do list can be automatically derived from various workgroup one involves in. By working on personalised view, one can still seamlessly contribute to various workgroups.

Therefore, the PKM is not detached from corp KM. I see the challenge is how to gel the two into a holistic one, and remain flexible for evoluation.

My 2-cent’s worth.

kc

Steve

You simply don’t have the right to make all of your knowledge public or leave the decision up to the corporation… such as candid thoughts sent to you in a confidential email.

Your experience and insights span mutliple employers or clients (serially or in parallel)… but your trusted relationships do too. Brining in old contacts on a new job cannot abdicate responsibility for treating them with respect.

The context and value of personal collections is often lost on upload… and just imposes more information overload for others

And yes, above all, see them as complementary, not contradictory. But I think the “failure” thing comes up because few enterprise KM systems come anywhere close to holding up their end of the bargain. It isn’t so much that p[ersonal systems are better, but as personal systems we can adapt them to our needs so much faster.